(Lincoln’s Inn, 3rd Sunday after Trinity, July 2, 1854.)
‘Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.’—Philip. ii. 6-12.
I have spoken to you of various effects which the writers of the New Testament attribute to the sacrifice of Christ, and have inquired how they connect the effects with the cause. Here St. Paul speaks of a certain state of mind which he wishes the Philippians to possess. He had been exhorting them ‘to do nothing through strife or vain-glory; but in lowliness of mind each to esteem the other better than himself.’ He had bidden them ‘look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.’ Very desirable advice, which they had, perhaps, often heard before, of which they knew the value, by the mischiefs which followed when they disregarded it. But what help lies in such experience? Who can keep the commandments the more, because he hears them twenty, or fifty, or a thousand times, and because he finds the inconvenience of breaking them? Things are done through strife and vain-glory by those who have all good maxims by heart; there is an inclination in each man to esteem himself better than others, which gives way to no aphorisms, and to no evidences that they are better than he is. Is there any stronger power before which it may give way? St. Paul believed there was: if he had not, he would have been silent; for he knew what was in others, as well as in himself; and he had no pleasure in tormenting them, or in making professions which he could not perform.
(1.) ‘Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.’ So our translators render the passage; faithfully, I think, to the spirit, if not to the letter, of it. The apostle tells the Philippians, as he told the Corinthians, that they may become actual partakers of the character or mind of Christ; nay, that if they were not partakers of it, they were misunderstanding their own position; they were choosing a position which did not belong to them. The thought that was in Christ the thought that possessed Him, he declares to be the right thought, the true thought; that which should possess and govern all human beings, that to which all things above and beneath must at last be subjected. And he then goes on to show us what this thought or mind of His is, and how it expressed itself.
(2.) ‘Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.’ Those who object to the doctrine of the Church concerning the unity and consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, claim that this passage should be translated differently; that it should be taken to mean, He did not eagerly grasp at being equal with God. I do not think that they gain much for their cause by that alteration; there are philological difficulties in the way of it; still, on the whole, it more nearly corresponds with the tone and purpose of this passage, than the ordinary version. ‘Being in the form of God,’—being, as the Epistle to the Hebrews puts it, ‘the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person,’—it was, nevertheless, not His way of proving His divinity, to grasp at divine power and glory. That was the lofty ambition of the sinful creature: ‘We shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’ He gave precisely the opposite sign and testimony of what He was. He emptied Himself. He gave up the bright and glorious form. ‘He took upon Him the form of a servant.’ The earthly creature wished to assert its relation to God by climbing to the stars. The heavenly Being, ‘He who was in the form of God,’ asserted His relation by stooping; by depriving Himself of that which was His; by adopting conditions that were altogether unlike His.
(3.) We are not to make this statement stronger and more startling, by substituting our notions for St. Paul’s. The heathens, we know, dreamt of gods who became incarnate in brute creatures. That would have seemed to them a much greater abdication than the one which is spoken of here. If we adopt the theory of Sacrifice, which creeps into all our minds—a theory which represents it as most heroical, when it most contradicts our reason—that conclusion must also be ours. But the apostle could conceive of nothing higher or more blessed than God’s order; every departure from it, under whatever pretext, must be evil. Here was none. Christ, being the perfect image of the Father, was the image after which men were created. The relation between Him and our race was implied in its existence. If His voice called all things out of chaos, it gave man the power to name things, to know each other, to confess a law. To become one of the race when He was the Head of it—to become a servant when He was the Lord—this was an act of deep and loving condescension: but there was nothing in it irregular and anomalous; the glory of it is, that it is the fulfilment of an original and divine purpose—that it is the means of removing the discord and anomalies that were resisting that purpose. How necessary it is to keep this distinction in remembrance, you will perceive as we proceed.
(4.) St. Paul explains further his expression, ‘taking on him the form of a servant,’ by another: ‘being made in, or having become in, the likeness of men.’ You will not imagine that St. Paul could intend, by this language, to give any countenance to the notion which gained so much hold in the Church afterwards, that Christ was not really a man, but only had the appearance of a man. That notion he often repudiates in direct terms; every word he writes denounces it implicitly. But the likeness of men stands in vivid contrast to the form of God. He was the original man, the type of all creation; as it is expressed in the Epistle to the Colossians, ‘the first-born of every creature.’ Now he assumes the condition of individual men; he puts on the fleshly accidents which belonged to them, as He had before stood to them in the closest spiritual relation. In the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the second and third chapters of which should always be read in illustration of this passage: ‘Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same.’ I do not quote the end of that verse, because that assigns another effect of the death of Christ, of which I hope to speak next Sunday. But the taking part of the flesh and blood, of which the children were partakers, those ‘whom He was not ashamed to call his brethren,’ those whom He was to claim as children of His Father, because they always had been so,—this is another way of stating the truth, that He came in the likeness of men.
(5.) He goes on: ‘And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself.’ To be in that fashion, in that earthly mortal mould, was the commencement of the humiliation, but not the consummation of it. He did not, when in that fashion, take any of the higher, grander, positions which sinful and dying men could still vindicate for themselves. He did not become a statesman, or warrior, or poet. But, entering into all human experiences and thoughts—understanding, therefore, inwardly, what these differences are among us, and how we feel them—He yet claimed the peasant condition instead of them; a position which identified Him with all men, with the lowest men, instead of one which raised Him above any. And this whilst He was doing regal acts, and was suspected of wishing to make Himself a King; while He was enduring the jealousy of popular teachers, because the people felt Him to be a Prophet; while the Priests were hating Him, as one who had Holiness to the Lord really inscribed on His forehead.
(6.) He felt all these reproaches, and knew what was to be the issue of them. Death, therefore, was before His eyes; not merely the ordinary death which He had implicitly taken upon Him when He was made flesh, but the death of a criminal—‘the death of the cross.’ He was ‘obedient,’ the apostle says, even to death; not as some one may, perhaps, suppose the word to mean, obedient to death, as if that was His master, but obedient to His Father, to the point of undergoing death, even though it involved agony and the sense of desertion.
(7.) This obedience, so carried out to this final point, is the reason, St. Paul says, why God has highly exalted Him, and given Him a name that is above every name. His prayer was—‘I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.’ Of that prayer, his words and acts, as they are recorded by the evangelists, are the exposition; every one of them is the glorification of His Father, the sinking of Himself. The Sermon on the Mount is nothing but a setting forth of the name, and kingdom, and will of His Father,—of His desire to make all holy as He is. Every deed of love to those tormented with plagues and sicknesses, every parable to the multitude, every discourse with His disciples, was letting His light shine before men, that they, seeing His good works, might glorify His Father in heaven. That was the work which He came to do, and which He finished when He gave up the ghost. The perfect Son, by His obedience, had revealed the perfect Father; the Absolute Goodness had come forth in all the relations and sympathies of the man. One act of self-assertion, of self-glorification, would have dimmed the image, would have made the vision of truth and love which was presented to the creature imperfect. There was no such act. All was self-denial, self-surrender; the love of the Father worked mightily and unresisted in the heart of the Son, till it was broken and offered with the whole body and soul as a complete sacrifice. And then came the triumph of the man, the restoration of the creature made in the image of God to its native home, the exaltation of the body redeemed from death to the right hand of the Father. God has highly exalted Him in that flesh which He had taken, and has given Him a name above angels, and principalities, that at His name, and in His name, every knee should bow; that all creatures should feel and confess Him—not as the Word, the Son of the Father, only, but—as Jesus the crucified—to be the Lord, the King and Ruler of men;—still to the glory of Him whom He has glorified, from whom He came, in whom He dwells, to the glory of God the Father.
(8.) This, then, is the mind or thought that was in Him; this is the mind or thought which has vindicated itself against the high, self-exalting thoughts, by which men have been divided from each other, by which they have defied God. When St. Paul preached Jesus Christ, and Him crucified, he preached that in obedience, humiliation, sacrifice, dwelt the mighty conquering power—that power against which no other in earth or heaven could measure itself. And his words have not been confuted by the experience of ages; they have been confirmed by the facts which seem at first sight most at war with them. Do you ask why the soldiers of Islam, in the first centuries after Mahomet, or in any subsequent centuries, prevailed against those who had the sign of the Cross on their banners? The only answer that can be given is, that there was more of this thought or mind of Christ, more of humiliation, and obedience, and sacrifice, in them than there was in their opponents. They prevailed not through their denial of Him, but through their implicit recognition of Him. So far as they had zeal, faith, union,—so far as they sought to magnify God’s name, and to give up themselves, they were His soldiers, not the Prophet’s; they succeeded because the incarnate Son of God was highly exalted, because there was a name given Him which is above every name. Because all power was given Him in heaven and earth, He would not suffer those who called themselves his servants to blaspheme His Father and to corrupt His brethren. Go through the history of the world, of the Church, of individuals, you will find it the same. So long as you creep along the ground, and ask why this man, or this party, or this faith, overcame, and that was subdued, you may be continually disposed to doubt and arraign the Providence that directs all things, to charge God foolishly. But ascend above the mists of earth to the clear heaven where Christ sits at the right hand of God, and the eternal Law becomes manifest which brings these discords into harmony. The Will that rules the universe, the Will that has triumphed and does triumph, is all expressed and gathered up in the Lamb that was slain. Beholding Him, you see whence come the peace and order of the world, whence comes its confusion. The principle of sacrifice has been ascertained once and for ever to be the principle, the divine principle; that in which God can alone fully manifest His own eternal Being, His inmost character, the order which He has appointed all creatures, voluntary and involuntary, to obey. The name of Jesus is the name to which all the intelligences of the universe refer themselves, and all the energies and impulses of the unconscious creation. They bow to it, as denoting the only source of their strength; they bow in it, as containing the only secret of their humiliation. If they did not confess Jesus to be the Lord of all, they would fall into all strife and separation, each seeking to be Lord himself, each supposing that the more he could lift up himself, the more he could depress his neighbour, the greater would be the triumph, each discovering at last that in this effort lies all weakness and ruin. If they did not bow in the name of Jesus to God the Father, they would never feel that He was their Father, and that they were His children, that He had given them their distinct tasks to fulfil, that He was imparting to them a common Spirit. This, therefore, is the law of the heavenly world; knowing which, we need not care how little we know about hierarchies of angels, and their attributes and relations; because we are sure that this must be the centre of their unity; that they must do the commandments of Him who gave Himself up to die, hearkening to the voice of His words; that as He did nothing through strife and vain-glory, so neither can they; that as He was lowly, so must they be; that as He lived for others, not for Himself, that must be their life; that they must be ever acting, because He is inspiring them with His ever-acting love; that they must be always at rest, because He is ever resting in His Father’s love.
(9.) Such a vision of the victorious, all-governing thought or mind of Christ is brought before us in this passage; but the vision was good for nothing except as it carried home the word to the heart of the Philippians— ‘Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.’ And in these words there lies the greatest wonder of all. That angels and principalities should have the mind of Jesus Christ—that they should be like Him, and do like Him,—this is conceivable; but that a set of jarring people—Jews, Greeks, Romans—with exclusive national feelings each with a separate interest and prejudice of his own, should have this one mind; that it should be reasonable, that it should be possible to bid them have it, this is what we find it so hard to believe. And it is hard, and it was as hard for them to believe it as it is for us. We understand, as we read St. Paul’s Epistles, what work an apostle had to keep peace in the Churches,—yes! and how very poorly he could perform the work. The great discovery he made was, that he could not perform it at all; that there were elements of strife in himself, and in those to whom he wrote, which no skill or arguments of his could bring into order. The difficulty was not less with baptized men than with others; it was greater. Their spirits had been stirred to their very foundations; —it was not only the ordinary strife and self-interest of the world which were exciting them to war: a host of new thoughts had been awakened within them, each of which might give birth to heresies and hatreds. Oh! what remorse and misery would have been in the thought of having founded societies with such principles of sorrow and mischief in them, if he had not felt that beneath them all lay that uniting mind of Christ, that divine Sacrifice, the name which can make the proudest spirits bow. But these He had been sent to proclaim in the midst of a fighting world; in them, he was certain lay the secret of eternal power and reconcilement. He could say to them all—’ You have these different ‘purposes, and notions, and interests, and wills; all ’attempts to stifle them because they are inconvenient, ’to crush them under some general rule, to adjust them ’by some benignant compromise, has always proved ’abortive, and always will. Instead of extinguishing ’them, I have been the means of awakening you to a “consciousness of them. But I have done this, because ’I know who is at the centre of all these different lines ’of thought, and purpose, and will of yours; in whom ’they all meet; I know whence those springs of life ’within you, which seem so full of turbulence, proceed. ’I can tell you who is ruling you, and with whom you ’are fighting. I can tell you how the power which is ’in the Ruler of heaven and earth may become a power ’in you. The meaning of your baptism, of your calling ’to be members of a Church, is, that He makes you ’sharers of His own mind; that He promises you His ’Spirit every day and hour to overcome that in you, ’and you, and you, which is disposed to set up a separate mind, a mind of your own, in opposition to it. ’The best good tidings I can declare to you, and to the ’universe, is that you need not do that. You can be at “peace; He has made peace for you. You can give up ’yourselves; He has given up Himself for you. You ’can claim your place in the heavenly order and ’harmony; He has brought you into it, breaking down ’the barrier of self-will which made our world an exile ’from it.’ After eighteen centuries, do the words sound more hopeless than ever? Does it seem more incredible than ever that there should be peace in the world, quite incredible that there should be peace in the Church? Do you begin to despair of it in your households, in your hearts? I would not make anyone think less sadly of the strife which he sees around him, and feels within him. The more sad it makes him, the more seriously he will ask himself—’ Whence comes it? ‘what is it that we have lost? what is it that we want?’ And the answer will come in due time; it comes from want of a Centre of Unity. That Centre men will seek for, high and low; in one sect and school, then in another; in one dogma and another, in one man and another, in one city and another. They will seek, and will not find, till they come to the cross of Christ, till they ask for the spirit of self-sacrifice; till they believe that He is highly exalted in order that He may bestow it upon His Church and family, and that He will bestow it upon that Church and family when they confess that God has sent His Son to be the Deliverer of it.
The aspect of Sacrifice which I have been considering to-day, is closely connected with that of which I spoke last Sunday. Of Christ, the Peace-offering, the Atonement of God with man, and of man with man, St. Paul spoke to the Ephesians. Here he connects that peace-offering more directly with the sin-offering. The sin of the world is its self-will, its self-gratification. The Apostle bids us behold the Lamb of God who takes away that sin by obedience to His Father, by emptying Himself of Glory, by humbling Himself to the likeness of the lowest of His creatures. By that sin-offering, He proves Himself to be the Lord of all. When we yield ourselves to Him as the Lord of our spirits, He gives us His lowly mind, and so gives us peace. But the passage to-day brings out more distinctly than the other did the truth which our Lord taught His disciples, when He took a little child, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily, I say unto you, Whosoever shall be converted, and shall become as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. ’ What can we do?’ we sometimes ask, ‘when there are so few examples of heroic virtue ’about us; so few great saints who can enable us to ’see in our common life the mind of Him who wrestled ’with our enemies?’ When God sends us such specimens of Himself, let us be thankful for them; let us try and learn from them all we can. But, in the meantime, we can do without them. There are children all about us.—Christ bids us learn of them. There are poor despised people all about us.—Christ was of no reputation. There is death among us,—not heroical, but ignominious death; and it was because he underwent such death, that God has given Him a name that is above every name.